


Story World

by eva_roisin



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Fic Challenge, Gen, Sibling Rivalry, sniktblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eva_roisin/pseuds/eva_roisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daken gets an unexpected invitation to Laura's birthday party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story World

Of all the pathetic things in the world, of all the abject occurrences and hapless incidents, Daken thinks there’s nothing sadder than seeing Laura celebrate her seventeenth birthday party at chain restaurant next to a train station.

Certainly there’s nothing wrong with train station restaurants—nothing other than the fact that they’re dirty and grubby and known for the worst kind of vagrant clientele—and certainly the world is filled with many greater tragedies. But watching Laura head to the restaurant in her hopeful silver flats and hair all teased, cripple boyfriend in tow, strikes Daken as the most devastating thing he has ever seen.

Daken knows there's only one way to get through this event: he needs to think of it as an attack. A good attack requires an element of surprise. A good birthday party also requires the same thing. But there is no surprise here. Laura already knows he’s in town.

Two days ago, when he’d first come up to San Francisco to see a business contact, he found himself tracking her without knowing why or what he wanted from her. It was a city of a million people, but he knew to head for the dock, to the wharf. He picked up her scent almost immediately—it was unmistakable, not quite identical to his father’s scent but close enough, and definitely _female_. And there she was at the bus stop—unruly hair, sad little skirt, purse tucked under her arm.

She didn’t see him.

He waited until the bus pulled up to the curb before slipping behind her into the line. Careful to conceal his scent, he got on after her and sat up front in the old people seats, pulling his hat down over his face. Laura wasn’t paying attention anyway. She was staring out the window. _Sloppy_ , he thought. _Really, Laura_. Then he wondered what she was thinking about—what collection of simple little thoughts could lull her into such a sense of security.

She got up to get off the bus and straightened her skirt, her purse dangling against her thigh. As she slipped out the back, he exited the front.

 _Fuck it_ , he thought. He stopped suppressing his scent.

That was all it took to wake her up. She halted, her feet planted firmly on the sidewalk. Her shoulders tensed as if she’d just been teased or mocked or given some very bad news.

“Laura,” he called, trailing after her.

Her arms were fixed to her sides, and her fingers twitched. She turned her head and glanced at him over her shoulder. “Daken.”

He stepped forward.

She turned to face him and her hands were balled into tight fists.

“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. Her fear was palpable; it caught in his nostrils. “Just relax.”

On the sidewalk, people walked around them without looking up. This—the indifference and gullibility of ordinary people—had always thrilled Daken. None of these poor citizens knew what stood so close to them, or how close they were to becoming collateral damage.

“You followed me,” Laura said. “What do you want?”

He dropped his hands and considered the situation. He still didn’t know what he wanted. Or perhaps he knew what he wanted but didn’t know how to put it.

Laura sniffed. “You came here to try to kill me.”

“Please,” he said. He crossed his arms and glanced at the adjacent building with its bright, glass windows. He nodded and then gestured to the storefront. They both made their way through the crowd and stood opposite each other. “If I wanted to kill you," he said quietly, "you’d already be dead. You never would have seen me coming. I’m not the type to cut off your head and then ask you to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ That’s just tacky.”

She stared at him. Right away, something changed about her. There was uneasiness, a sense of dissatisfaction.

And then Daken wondered if those feelings weren’t coming from him, if he wasn't smelling his own awful discomfort.

Ever since he met Laura—and ever since their last anticlimactic showdown—things had been a little off. Not _bad_. Just off. He’d gone about his business in Madripoor and Los Angeles. He’d kept himself busy, lined up new opportunities. But underneath it all, he felt distracted. Coming face to face with Wolverine’s little clone had unraveled him more than he wanted to admit. Even though the knowledge didn’t make much of a difference to how he lived his life—how he traveled around and what he hoped to achieve and how he thought about himself in relation to other people—it still ate at him. He’d be on the subway in Los Angeles and start thinking about Laura, remembering that the cadence of her voice sounded—he hated to admit this—like a higher-pitched version of his. And how she walked like Logan. (Did this mean that _he_ walked like Logan?) He’d wonder how she found about him, and why he’d been so clueless about her. He hated the fact that she got the drop on him before he had any inkling that she existed.

And because she was Wolverine’s clone, he could now understand more clearly the genetic link that connected them all, the common thread that held the three of them together. He wondered if there was anything inside of him that came from his mother—or, conversely, if Logan really claimed all of him. Just as Logan had once ruined things by showing up and by being alive, Laura had destroyed the pretty illusion that he was rare and exceptional, his father’s one and only little earthly deposit. He wondered, after all was said and done, if there’d be any part of him left that belonged just to him. Even killing her wouldn’t make things right again.

As he stood in front of her on the sidewalk, he thought of all these questions and then let them fall away. He knew why he’d come here, but now it all seemed nonsensical and stupid. “Well,” he said. “You were a million miles away just now. You should really learn to pay closer attention to your surroundings, Laura dear. And where are you off to?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t follow me anymore. You have been equally unwise in letting me see you. Now I know you’re here.”

“Maybe I wanted you to know. Maybe I have nothing to hide.”

“That,” she said, “is doubtful.” She lifted her chin and stared right into his eyes. “If you don’t have anything substantive to say, I’ll be going.” She angled her body away from him.

“Wait,” he said. He almost reached for her but thought better of it. He didn’t doubt that she’d cut off his hand or punch a hole in his chest. She was mean and hostile. (The way he’d been, he thought, the first time he’d fought Logan.)

She paused and glanced back at him.

“I can walk with you.” He gestured to the sidewalk. “To wherever you’re going.”

“I would not prefer that.”

Now he started to anger. She was so cool, so intractable. “Oh, you’re afraid to be seen with me, is that it?”

She turned to face him once more. “Not afraid.” Then she just looked at him.

Daken felt himself scrutinized in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Usually he did the gazing, the considering. Laura looked at him as though she’d already decided to kill him and was figuring out where to stash his body.

Then she nodded at him and her expression seemed to soften a bit. The change in her attitude was even more unsettling; it was as though she’d cut through his bullshit to realize that he was really no threat at all. “It is almost my birthday.”

“What?”

“When you mentioned the word birthday before, at first I thought that you knew. I thought that my birthday might provide an added rationale in your trying to kill me—a symbolic gesture of sorts. Then I realized that you didn’t know at all and that your mention of the word had simply been a coincidence.”

He stood there for a moment and tried to set aside his confusion. It seemed strange—almost impossible—that she’d have cut him open a minute earlier and that now she seemed so conversant. Like she was confiding in him. He shook his head and tried to unravel the motive behind this conversation before realizing that it had no motive. Or, alternatively: that her motive was really quite simple. She wanted to remind him once more of how little he knew about her. It would have been good, he thought, if he _had_ killed her on her birthday and dumped her body on Logan’s doorstep. How foolish of him not to think of that. Now it was too late.

“Not today,” she continued. “My birthday is two days from today. In forty-six hours, I will be celebrating it with my friends. You are welcome to come if you like.”

He tucked his hands in his pockets and gathered himself. “Is this an Asian birthday or a Western birthday? I mean, is this the anniversary of when you came screaming into the world, or when one of those lab jockeys finally mixed the right test tube?”

Her eyelid twitched—imperceptibly, almost, but he was sure he saw it. “It is the day I was born. What about you? When is your birthday?”

Now it was his turn to feel uncomfortable—and right then and there he realized, too late, the real reason for this conversation. She was taunting _him_. Either she had learned the ways of girls from the other girls she ran with, or she had always been a girl—all competitiveness and secret spite. She might have been created in a lab, she was saying, but at least she _knew_ the exact date of her birth. He, on the other hand, had only a vague idea of his birthday. (His adoptive parents, always so guarded and half-ashamed of his origins, never openly speculated how old he’d been when they found him. They simply designated a day in the winter and celebrated it then.)

Logan. Logan would know his birthday. But there was no way in fucking hell Daken would ask him.

“Birthdays are overrated,” Daken said. “And a waste of my time.”

“Well,” Laura said. She surveyed the crowd. “If you say so. But if you change your mind and would like to join me, you would be welcome. No one would hurt you. You have my word.”

“Why would I want that?” he said, quietly amazed that the conversation’s dynamics had changed so much. She had gone from being scared to upset to quietly confident, and he’d gone from smug to irritated to bewildered. And now she was offering _him_ protection. He felt a funny pang, a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the way things were supposed to work.

She slipped past him and went on her way.

 

***

 

At the restaurant, Daken doesn’t announce his presence. He watches from across the street as she enters the restaurant, which is a big, fake-looking 1950s diner with neon lights and glass windows and identical-looking booths. On the other side of the glass, she and the cripple say something to the hostess before filing to a booth down the row. They join two people already there.

Daken straightens his tie and heads across the street. Inside the restaurant, he walks right by the hostess’ station and slides onto a stool at the counter. He picks up a glossy, laminated menu to hide his face. When he’s certain that no one has seen him, he lowers the menu slightly to look.

The two people at the table are adults. He recognizes that degenerate Gambit fuck right away. The black woman he’s not so sure about. From what he knows about the X-Men, he thinks she’s Storm, and he knows about her mainly because she’s the puppet queen of some African country. So these are Laura’s friends. He wonders if she has any friends her own age. Then he remembers that he never had friends his own age either. Still doesn’t.

He carefully lines up bottles of ketchup and mustard in front of him and watches things from his spot at the counter. Gambit starts talking loudly and gestures with his long arms. At one point he reaches over and tousles the boy’s hair. As the boy laughs and starts to lift up one of his stumps, Daken tries not to cringe. He’s always been indifferent to ugliness and deformity, but something about this kid calls to mind the grotesque, and the stumps are the least of it. Daken doesn’t like him. In fact, this Julian Keller person is one guy on whom he _has_ been able to do a background check. He’s got a police record, meaning he’s dim enough to get caught. He also made things ugly during that whole San Francisco riot business a couple of summers ago; Daken remembers him as the annoying mutant Zionist who needed to be forcefully shut up. He doesn’t know how the kid lost his hands, and he doesn’t care either.

He pages through his menu and decides he’s just going to order a cup of coffee before slipping out. He certainly isn’t going to join Laura and her friends—he’d never planned to in the first place. He just wanted to see for himself what kind of people she’s got. _Not many_ , he thinks, starting to gloat, but this ungenerous observation only distracts him from underlying truth: Laura might not have many friends, but the ones she does have seem genuinely devoted to her. The Gambit guy dotes. He motions to the waiter and tells him to bring out a cake with as many sparklers as they can legally fit. “I don’t want you to blow up the place, _ami_ ,” he says. “But a few minor explosions might give the little lady a real fine birthday to remember.”

As for the Storm woman, her voice is softer. Daken can’t make out her words. She sits next to Laura and puts her arms around her shoulders and smiles. Laura smiles back.

 _Well aren’t you loved_ , Daken thinks. Yes, despite the shitty middleclass surroundings and depressing décor, Daken recognizes one thing: Everyone loves Laura. More puzzling is that she didn’t even _do_ anything to make that happen. She’s awkward and unsociable, not gregarious and friendly. She doesn’t have what he has—that way of coaxing people along. In fact, she doesn’t have one tenth his wit or talent or capabilities. She has Logan’s simple powers and personality (his prosaic, pragmatic approach to life, his deadening honesty) and none of Daken’s genetic refinements (the ability to make people feel things, the ambition). But Laura makes people love her all the same, and Daken finds himself wooed. He wants to hate her but can’t.

He never thought he’d be envious of a teenage girl.

The world has a natural hierarchy. Romulus taught him this, and though most of what Romulus said was bullshit, Daken accepted early on that it was good to be young and male, and that it was best of all to be young and male and strong and mutant. The rest of the world trailed hopelessly behind, with women and children and old people bringing up the rear. There were exceptions, of course. Women had their particular uses, and children might someday grow to be strong. Old people and the disabled were the most expendable. Cyber reinforced most of these ideas, and by the time Daken was fourteen, he understood himself as the inheritor of the things that people wanted most: wealth, power, beauty, eternal youth, and brute strength. He didn’t envy anyone.

But he still liked to look in on other people’s lives. When he was fifteen, and no longer working with Cyber, he developed a taste for novels. Not just any kind of novel—not Fitzgerald or Hemingway or Faulkner—but nineteenth-century novels. _Domestic_ novels. _Anna_ _Karenina_ _. Madame Bovary. The Portrait of a Lady_. Girl novels, complete with big rambling houses and potential suitors and all the trappings of aristocratic life.

“What is that? What are you reading?” Romulus asked him once when they checked in together at a hotel in Munich.

“Nothing,” Daken said, dropping the book to his side but using his forefinger to keep his place. “Just a book about a stupid woman.” The book was _Wuthering_ _Heights_. He hated Catherine, hated how self-absorbed she was, just as he couldn’t stand Jane Eyre’s solipsism. Still, he could never put down a girl book once he started reading it.

“Trashy novels,” Romulus said. “You shouldn’t waste your time. I told you, novels breed imbecility.”

“I know,” Daken said, taking his finger from the pages and closing the book. He set it aside. “I was bored, Master. That’s all it was.”

“Boredom is common. You should never be bored. A great man knows how to occupy himself without resorting to fantasy.”

“Yes, Master.”

Romulus wasn’t against reading as social practice. But he was against novels as a general principle. Always about two centuries behind common sentiment, he still harbored a lingering eighteenth-century suspicion that novel-reading was feminizing.

As for Daken? Well, he loved slipping into a world with other people, a story world, where women often found themselves ruined by men and their own untidy feelings. He felt that he was superior to these made-up people. But underneath all his puffed-up superiority, he wondered why he cared so much.

Now he watches Laura with her friends and wonders once more why he cares so much. She’s Jane Eyre or Mary Barton or Elizabeth Bennet. Maybe all of the above. Or maybe _none_ of the above. In either case, what he means is this: history is on her side. It wants her to win. The world is never sympathetic to those who are powerful and strong. It doesn’t champion their victories or commiserate with them about their setbacks. A novel about Daken would end in defeat and comeuppance. A novel about Laura, even if it had a sad ending, would still find meaning in her sorrows and redemption in her life.

He hasn’t even gotten his coffee yet, but he’s done here. It was stupid to come, to do this to himself. He has a world to run, after all. He sets a five down on the counter, gathers his things, and heads for the door.

He’s just three or four steps outside when he hears the door swing open. He turns his head to look.

“You’re leaving,” she says. It’s not a question, and she doesn’t say his name. She lets the door swing shut behind her and follows him onto the sidewalk.

He pushes up his sleeves and turns around. “Well, you’ve certainly got a motley little group there. Forgive me for not wanting to stop and chat, but I don’t know if your friends and I have anything in common.”

Laura’s expression stays fixed in indifference.

“If I didn’t know you better,” Daken continues, “I’d think you were auditioning for an after-school special. Anyway, so daddy dearest couldn’t make it. Can’t say I’m surprised. After all, that Jubilee girl is probably having another crisis. Or maybe he just forgot.”

Now Laura’s mouth moves slightly. Daken can tell she’s biting down on her tongue. “Why did you come then?”

“Here.” Daken reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out an envelope. Hands it to her. “Happy birthday.”

She’s still a moment. Then she reaches to accept the envelope. She looks inside.

“Two tickets to _Salomé_. Japanese version.”

She studies the tickets and then looks up at him. She doesn’t smile or frown or scowl. She just stares.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

“It is . . . appreciated. You did not have to get me anything.” She slips the tickets back into the envelope. “Thank you.”

“What? A little too high culture for you and your boyfriend? Sorry I couldn’t get Lady Gaga tickets.”

“Metric,” she says.

“What?”

“Julian and I like Metric. Not Lady Gaga.”

He gives into the temptation to roll his eyes and reaches over and plucks the envelope from her hands. “I was simply making a gesture.”

Laura peers up at him. “You can’t make a gesture. You haven’t been wronged.”

He tucks the tickets back into his jacket pocket. “Your being alive means that I’ve been wronged. But settle something for me. Isn’t it a little difficult for your boyfriend to be in these situations? How does he eat? Do you help him? From my perspective, hands are good for only two things, and feeding yourself is just one of them.”

Before he can fully indulge in Laura’s indignation, the restaurant door swings open. That Gambit fuck stands there, and Julian Keller is behind him.

“ _Petite_ ,” Gambit says, but he’s giving Daken a long, cold once-over that just feels dramatically resentful, even for this situation. “You need help?”

“I am fine, Gambit,” Laura says. “I will be inside in just a minute.”

“Hey!” Julian exclaims. He pushes past Gambit and steps out onto the sidewalk. “That’s Daken! Laura, what the fuck is this guy doing here?”

“Julian—”

“What the fuck am _I_ doing here?” Daken asks. He looks at Laura. “You didn’t tell them I was coming?” He feels like he’s been punked.

Laura glances at him. “Given your history and our previous interactions, there was only a thirty-five percent chance that you would actually come tonight. I decided to take my chances by not telling.”

Daken tries to wrap his mind around the fact that Laura—Laura of all goddamn people—thinks she can predict his behavior by using some kind of algorithm. Worst thing is, she wasn’t totally wrong about him. He almost _didn’t_ come, and when he did, he tried to leave without being seen. He feels both uneasy and grateful—uneasy because Laura _knows_ him, and grateful because of the same thing. It’s a thought he wants to keep pushing. Maybe this is why he came here—to be recognized and held accountable.

“You _invited_ him?” Julian says. He lurches toward her, arms bending at the elbows. “I told you he beat the crap out of me when Osborn took me prisoner.”

“Alright,” Gambit says, holding up his hand. “Let’s not make this official.”

Daken smirks.

“I mean, just because he’s Wolverine’s son, doesn’t mean you’re _obligated_ toward him or anything,” Julian continues. “You’re nothing like him. He’s a sociopath for Christ’s sake!”

“Julian—”

“Hey kid, clap louder for me,” Daken says. “I can’t hear you.”

“He’s not your brother, Laura,” Julian says. “And even if he is, he’s not your family. We are.”

Daken looks at this kid, and already he sees himself pulling his eyes out, making a real Mr. Rochester out of him. Julian’s stumps quiver as he holds them right next to his hips, and he assumes a fighting stance even though he’s got nothing to fight with. _Pathetic_ , Daken thinks, but underneath his grubby, defensive thoughts, he recognizes that Julian is smart. Worse, he’s sort of brave.

He steps forward and stands in front of Julian. “Here,” he says, reaching inside of his jacket for the envelope. He holds it up in front of Julian’s face. “For you guys.” Then he tosses it on the ground at the kid’s feet. “Go ahead. Pick it up.”

Right away everyone’s mood shifts, and Daken sees himself as the others see him. Why does he lose control so easily? Why is he so wounded and vulnerable? He spins on his heels and starts to walk away from them.

Five seconds later, something slams into his ass. His knees buckle and he staggers forward. He doesn’t quite hit the ground, but only because he’s quick enough to put his hands out. When he straightens and turns around, he sees Julian laughing. A plastic trashcan lid rolls to a stop three feet away.

“Hellion, stand down!” Laura says.

Daken turns and gets ready to pounce, to attack. Fuck the element of surprise. Then he comes back to himself. It’s three on one, not to mention the woman inside. No, he’ll just have to wait. Gambit’s right—there’s no need to make this official, not when he can track down the Julian Keller kid on his own time and cut off his feet. He brushes off his pants and crosses the street. He doesn’t look back.

 

***

 

He still has a hankering for coffee, so he finds a café three blocks away and slips inside. While he waits in line, he tries to calm himself. _It’s over, it’s over_ , he thinks. _Nothing happened_. But he knows that something did happen, and that it’s left him feeling bruised and embarrassed and had.

He remembers the last time he felt this way—when he betrayed his father to Romulus in that Paris hotel room. After Romulus left—leaving him with the cooling body of a woman, no less—Daken wondered why he didn’t feel a greater sense of satisfaction. After all, he was playing both his father and Romulus, and he was going to come out on top. But all he had was the memory of where Romulus had touched him, where his fingers had pressed against his shoulder. _Tell me everything_ , Romulus had said, and Daken had complied. And not because he was laying the plans for his grand takeover, but because he had wanted to. And when it happened—when Romulus had touched him and taken his secrets—Daken hadn’t once thought of his mother.

Romulus. Romulus was just so appalling. He hadn’t apologized or explained. He hadn’t even gestured to the lie that they’d both bought into for years. He hadn’t said _, That business with your mother, it wasn’t what you think,_ or _She was weak, she had to be put down_. Daken wouldn’t have accepted any of these explanations, but to not get any acknowledgment seemed especially egregious. Daken’s mother had died because Romulus wanted her to—from Romulus's point of view, no other explanation was necessary.

When Daken gets up to the counter he decides to change his order to hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles. He picks up his mug at the end of the counter and almost runs into Laura.

“Jesus,” he says. He fights back near-relief and terrible, terrible annoyance.

“You were a million miles away just now.”

“What do you want?”

Hands in her coat pockets, she shrugs. (Her coat is gray leather with a cheap-looking fabric collar and matching cuffs. He hates this.)

He doesn’t wait for her to answer. He walks past her and takes a table next to the window, setting his mug down so he can take off his jacket and drape it across the back of the chair. Then he sits down.

Without taking off her coat, she slides into the chair across from his. “The tickets,” she says, reaching into her pocket and producing the envelope. She sets them on the table. “Julian does not know Japanese.”

“I’m shocked.” He takes a sip of his hot chocolate and hopes the whipped cream doesn’t stick to his upper lip.

“But you knew this,” she says and her voice is clipped and indifferent. She’s like a doctor delivering a bad prognosis. “You bought me two tickets to a show in Japantown because you wanted to go. You wanted us to go together.”

He sets the mug down and pushes it away from him. Then he leans back in his chair and looks at her. “See, this is where you’re every bit as ridiculous as I initially thought you were. This is where your own blind egotism is leading you into this morass of faulty reasoning and utter stupidity, and why I'm better than you. I don’t want to go see _Salomé_. Least of all with you.”

She stares at him and doesn’t blink.

“It’s a shitty play,” he explains. “Wilde’s worst. No one goes to see _Salomé._ Not willingly, anyway. I wanted you and your boyfriend to go and be miserable. That’s all. When I bought the tickets, I certainly never envisioned having to sit through it myself.” He hunches back over the table and picks up his mug. “So, no, I won’t go with you.”

She touches the envelope with her fingertips.

“Ask Logan,” he continues. “Assuming he comes back to town in time to give you a birthday hug.” He lets out a big breath and then looks at her. “So, you’re seventeen now.”

She nods.

“You’re still young,” he says.

“And when you met me you thought I was ridiculous?”

“Yes. And now I just think you’re a tart.” He says this to distract himself from the fact that she’s just as greedily interested in other people’s perceptions as he is.

Then he puts his finger on another source of momentary discomfort: She’s probably about the same age as his mother was when she met Logan. He guesses his mother was eighteen, maybe twenty. No older than twenty-two. A girl who didn’t even know herself.

“Don’t marry that guy,” he blurts out.

She looks up. “He is the love of my life.”

Daken sets his mug down with a clunk. “You don’t have a life. You don’t even have your own genetic footprint.”

“What is it to you, Daken?” Laura says quietly.

He sits back again and keeps his fingers on the handle of his mug. A moment passes. “Don’t you want coffee?”

“I have to go,” she says, rising to her feet and picking up the envelope. He remembers that she has friends with her, people who are waiting somewhere else. He wonders if she’ll tell them about this conversation or if it will remain a private thing, something for just the two of them. She probably won’t tell Logan. The boyfriend is another matter.

“Thank you for the tickets,” she says.

He hears himself say goodbye and watches as she leaves the café without looking back, the door swinging shut behind her. _Just like me_ , he thinks, but no, that’s not quite right. She’s going to her home. She’s going back to her people and he’s staying put. Despite all the ways he hopes and fears they have too much in common, he knows they’re still separate, still far apart.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the gayreign fic exchange for mozzarellaroses. Prompt: Daken finds out that Laura is Logan's clone and legally Daken's sister. Let us assume that after a bit of thinking, he decides that Laura is probably the most important person in the world to him because HE HAS A SISTER and he adored his mother, so HIS SISTER seems like something that's a big deal for him. So he adores her, he dotes on her, he may criticize her but he'll always protect her and some such.


End file.
